DALLAS – Collision repair shops should become process-centered enterprises focused on eliminating waste and improving throughput. Attendees at the Women's Industry Network (WIN) Conference today received an overview of how to reach that goal using lean production principles.
In his conference session "Process Improvement Insights," consultant John Sweigart, principal at The Body Shop@, explained how processes modeled on the Toyota Production System could be used to improve repair operations.
"This is a really a beginner's look at lean production methods, and the fundamentals of that approach, and how those apply to collision repair," Sweigart said.
The Toyota Production System was developed by the automaker to eliminate inconsistency and waste, while improving manufacturing and supply chain flow.
Sweigart and his business partner Brad Sullivan developed a production solution called the Star-Link System, a lean autobody repair and workflow management process that can enable lower cost, on-time vehicle repairs. In his session, Sweigart outlined the five fundamental principles of the Toyota system:
1. The customer must determine where the value is in the business
2. You must understand and map out where value and waste exist in your organization
3. Create a way to flow value back to the customer
4. Once you create that flow, you have to create a full production system that allows the customer to pull value from your organization
5. Instead of pursuing your competition or chasing benchmarks, the organization must pursue perfection.
Sweigart opened the session with a game called Speedball that demonstrates how lean principles work. Attendees have to put 30 balls through a "production" process, and are measured on quality and speed of production (how fast the balls move through the room, and how many are dropped).
According to Sweigart, it can be challenging to get shop owners to understand how lean principles can be used in the collision industry, because so many of them spend their time dealing with day-to-day management issues and crises.
"It can be difficult to grasp the thinking behind the Toyota production system," Sweigart said. "Part of the reason is that it's so simple; it seems like there should be more to it. But there is a shift in thinking that has to occur. In our business, our objective is not to fix cars, but to fix the process of fixing cars. That's a huge shift in thinking.
"Everyone gets wrapped up in the day-to-day process of fighting fires in their business," he continued. "In a lean environment, the entire objective of the business is to do nothing but improve the process, so there is almost zero focus on fixing cars. The beauty of it is that you are fixing cars while you are doing this. You're just not thinking about how to get that particular job done, but how you can improve your step in the process in relation to what everybody else is doing. Once you're there, it's very simple to execute."
